People with a chronic disease form a significant proportion of the patients visiting general practice (GP) doctors. GPs manage chronic diseases by providing counselling, drug prescriptions, and referrals to specialists. They also help with prevention of chronic diseases by monitoring the biomedical risk factors and giving advice on lifestyle changes to modify the behavioural risk factors.
In Australia, GP service use is monitored by the BEACH survey, an annual sample of around 100,000 episodes of care (out of an estimated 100 million annual GP-patient encounters). In 2003-04, the sample included 98,877 encounters. Information was recorded on 146,674 problems managed in these encounters, and average rate of 146.3 problems managed per 100 encounters.
The 12 chronic diseases along with 3 of the biomedical risk factors covered in this web site (high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and excess weight) accounted for 19.6% of all problems managed by GPs, a rate of 28.1 per 100 encounters (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Chronic diseases and conditions managed in general practice, 2003-04
Note: COPD refers to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Source: The 2003-04 BEACH survey database.
High blood pressure was the leading chronic disease or condition managed, and also the most common individual problem managed by GPs, at a rate of 9.2 per 100 encounters. Other chronic diseases and conditions with high rates of GP management (around 3 per 100 encounters) were depression, arthritis, diabetes and asthma.
Chronic diseases with low rates of GP management included oral diseases, stroke, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and glomerulonephritis/nephrosis (used here to measure the impact of chronic kidney disease on GP services). It is possible that people with these diseases receive treatment in specialists' clinics and data from that sector are not included in the BEACH survey.
Further information
For detailed codes of the diseases and conditions used for estimation of problems managed by GPs, go to International Classification of Primary Care.
For detailed data on each individual problems managed, go to Distribution of problems managed in general practice.
For other information see the AIHW publication General practice activity in Australia 2003-04 and the Family Medicine Research Centre's General Practice Data cubes [external link].